KAWHMU, Burma — The pastel-painted vocational school hacked out of the bamboo jungle is a long way from the international salons where Burma’s symbol of resistance, Aung San Suu Kyi, is now an established figure.

Here in her parliamentary district, a network of poor rice-growing hamlets, the opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate played local politician: opening a hotel training school that she hopes will catapult talented students out of the fields and into jobs as maids, cooks and butlers in Burma’s booming tourist industry.

“Our society wants to have academia,” she said Wedensday to a small crowd in Oxford-inflected English, a remnant of her university days in Britain. “But we have to be practical. It’s a matter of equipping our children with skills that see them through life.”

Few doubt that Ms. Suu Kyi has done well for her constituents, delivering electricity where none existed, using her cachet to draw hoteliers from Thailand and Switzerland to invest in the school.

But human rights advocates and even members of her political party are raising questions about her performance in the broader political arena.

In the four years since she emerged from house arrest as a world-famous champion of democracy, Ms. Suu Kyi, 69, has hesitated to take on many of her country’s biggest issues, critics say, and has failed those who expected a staunch human rights advocate. She has instead emphasized a general call for rule of law, a critical issue for a country emerging from a half-century of dictatorship but one, they say, that falls short of addressing particular grievances.

Since entering Parliament two years ago, she has been reluctant to speak out about abuses by government forces against civilians in the ethnic conflict in Kachin State, saying both sides were responsible for killings. As chairwoman of a panel investigating land disputes between poor farmers and a copper mining company accused of unfairly taking their land, she sided with the company. Perhaps most surprising of all, she has refused to admonish the government for its harsh policies against the Rohingya Muslim minority, policies that U.S. President Barack Obama criticized last week.

Human rights advocates say they are astonished that she has abdicated what they see as her moral responsibility to shine a light on obvious human rights abuses. She has remained immune to appeals from American officials, who say they have suggested on a number of occasions that she speak out on the Rohingya.

“It’s not the political authority of her office people are asking her to wield,” said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “It is her moral authority. It is her authority as an iconic Nobel Peace Prize winner that she has failed to wield.”

As the opposition leader in a Parliament dominated by the military and former members of the military, which ruled the country for nearly five decades, her ability to steer government policy is limited. But she has raised her voice on some issues, particularly in opposition to the military’s power to veto constitutional amendments, a brave stance that wins her plaudits but that so far has not succeeded.

Her pet project is the parliamentary Rule of Law and Tranquillity Committee, an advisory panel on one of the country’s central problems, corruption in the judiciary and the police. Next month, two centers to train police officers and judges, sponsored at her panel’s urging by the United Nations Development Program, will begin operations, an aide said.

Her defenders say she is doing great work under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. “She has tried to change the country, but she can’t because it is a government still dominated by the military,” said Myint Myint Khin Pe, the founder of the Free Funeral Service Society, a charity that organizes low-cost funerals for the poor. “She’s very intelligent but alone.”

In response to criticism that she could do more to quicken the pace of reform, she has blamed the ruling party for dragging its feet.

But people who have come to know her in the last four years say they are mystified as to why she has remained so muted, even in her freedom. Some see her positions, and her silences, as political expedience.

“She should speak out about the Rohingya to prevent us Burmese from being racist,” said Ko Tar, an environmental and education advocate. “It is a political calculation that she does not.”

Mr. Obama is expected to meet with Ms. Suu Kyi, as well as with young Burmese, during his visit to the country on Friday.

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: A genocide could be brewing in Burma where monks are firing up the majority Buddhist populace to attack Muslims.

As happened in Rwanda almost two decades ago, the West is looking the other way while the inter-religious (and ethnic) assaults and killings mount

Rohingya Muslims make up about 5% of Burma’s population, but as the majority Buddhists tell it, they represent a growing threat to the country’s well-being just by being there.

They are also outsiders ethnically. Many are the descendants of people from the Indian subcontinent who moved to Burma during the days of the British raj. Others are dispossessed peasants from Bangladesh who have eked out a living on the fringes of society. Most are stateless.

At least 237 people have been killed in the past year and about 150,000 people fled their homes. The deadliest incidents have been in Rakhine, home to about 800,000 Rohingya Muslims. More recently, the violence has spread to central Burma, where roving gangs of Buddhists are attacking mosques and Muslim-owned businesses. However, most of those sentenced for taking part in the violence have been Muslim.

The government appears to have done else little to quell the violence, though President Thein Sein spouted all the right words on the weekend

“Freedom of religion and freedom of expression must be protected for democracy to flourish in Myanmar and mutual trust, respect, understanding and tolerance are needed in order to have freedom of religious worship and expression,” he said.

This looked remarkably like window dressing coming as it did just before his visit to London and Paris, where the matter was bound to be discussed. “We are … very keen to see greater action in terms of promoting human rights and dealing with regional conflicts,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said. “We are particularly concerned about what has happened in Rakhine province and the Rohingya Muslims.”

Sadly, the whole affair has tarnished the reputation of Aung San Suu Kyi, once seen as Burma’s democracy icon but who has little to say about the violence. “They are not our citizens” is the chilling line put forward by her National League for Democracy. (Translation: she has an election to win and can’t afford to turn off voters.)

Ahamed Jarmal, secretary general of the Burmese Rohingya Organization, is among those who fear Burma could become another Rwanda. Writing in The Guardian, he says,

In Burma, ethnic cleansing is happening. We have seen more human rights violations and attacks on Rohingya minorities in the past two years than in the last 20. Organized in monasteries and on Facebook, a wave of hate is being broadcast against the Muslim Rohingya community in Burma and a new apartheid system is being introduced.

My family regularly get called “dogs” or worse when they walk down the street. The government continues to deny us citizenship, telling us this isn’t our home. We can’t marry the people we love and are told we’re only allowed to have two children per family. We can’t travel from one village to another without permission. No other minority in the world faces such extreme and vicious treatment. We are being treated as criminals simply because we exist.

His remarks are bolstered by reporting from Burma itself. In an article for The Daily Telegraph from Mandalay, Fiona MacGregor notes,

Radical Buddhist nationalism is sweeping Burma, and at the forefront of the movement is a group more commonly associated with peace and tolerance: monks.

The most prominent among them is the controversial cleric U Wirathu, who gives passionate sermons from his Mandalay base calling on Buddhists to stand up against the “Muslim threat.”

“I believe Islam is a threat not just to Buddhism, but to the [Burmese] people and the country,” says the monk, whose boyish face and toothy grin belie the name his critics have given him: “the Buddhist bin Laden”.

Time magazine recently set off an uproar in Burma when it profiled the 46-year-old monk under the headline, “The Face of Buddhist Terror.”

The backlash showed how little things have rarely changed in Burma. The generals reverted to their usual tactics: ban the magazine and shoot the messenger, writes Francis Wade, who has also interviewed Wirathu, in a posting on the website Asian Correspondent.

President Thein Sein and his spokesperson Ye Htut have personally weighed in on the furor surrounding the interview. Their concern is that it could affect government efforts to rebuild harmony between Buddhists and Muslims (quite where these are I’m not sure), or sully the reputation of Buddhism. Nowhere do they address the actual parts of the interview that are cause for alarm, such as Wirathu’s dictate to followers that, “Now is not the time for calm. Now is the time to rise up, to make your blood boil.”

It seems the journalist who wrote the piece is the greater of two evils. It reminds me of an article that appeared in the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper several weeks after Cyclone Nargis in 2008, which killed close to 140,000 people. ‘The enemy that is worse than the cyclone’ was the headline, and the article an indictment of the work of journalists who had circumvented government restrictions to report on the true extent of the disaster, which the junta had tried to hide. They were deemed worse than the death toll of the cyclone.

compiled by Araminta Wordsworth

awordsworth@nationalpost.com

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As fond as westerners may be of the otherworldly Burma that exists today, few Burmese in this rundown living museum find life to be charming or pleasant. They hunger for change and want it now.

Catch the old Burma while you can. It is disappearing fast.

Burma is easy to spot from the air on a cloudless night. There is nothing but darkness for hundreds of kilometres the moment a Hong Kong-bound airliner leaves Indian airspace, where the surface of the Earth is heavily flecked with lights.

A daylight satellite view tells the same story in a different way. From space, Burma is a pristine, emerald jewel compared with its eastern neighbour, Thailand, where large splotches of land have been cleared of trees.

The curse and allure of this Shangri-La is that it has been isolated for half a century. The generals who ruled the country with an iron fist so grossly mismanaged the economy that it remains relatively unspoiled by modernity and common afflictions that exist elsewhere, such as air and noise pollution. Although blessed with lots of water for hydroelectric power, few lights are visible at night because nearly 50,000 towns and villages are not connected to what little there is of a national power grid.

Burma remains far greener than Thailand because the Burmese have only recently begun to fell Asia’s last ancient rain forest of teak and other precious woods. Also largely untouched so far have been: a rich bounty of mostly untapped oil and gas; gemstones such as jade, ruby and sapphire; and other minerals such as copper and gold.

Most Burmese toil at backbreaking jobs in the largely pastoral hinterlands. During a bumpy 14-hour journey along the old 700-kilometre, partly British-built road connecting Yangon to Mandalay, one sees repair crews comprised largely of tiny young women carrying heavy loads of crushed stones in trays that male labourers stack on their heads or shoulders. Working from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. under the intense tropical sun, these human beasts of burden each earn about 2,500 kyat a day or about $3 Cdn.

Small wonder, then, that Burma remains almost dead-last in the global wealth sweepstakes.

The view from a passing airplane or a satellite creates the impression that few people live in Burma. The truth is that 64 million Burmese inhabit an area the size of Manitoba. The country is a cauldron of tribes and faiths speaking a Babel of languages and nursing grievances that have produced longstanding conflicts in several states. Christians, Hindus and Sikhs have watched uneasily from a distance this fall – and not for the first time – as Buddhist nationalists in the west ignored their own faith’s gentle message about peace and tolerance and savagely attacked the Muslim minority.

AP Photo/Mark J. TerrillPeter Waterfield and Thomas Daley of Great Britain compete during the Men's Synchronized 10 Meter Platform Diving final at the Aquatics Centre in the Olympic Park during the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Sensing what a bonanza Burma might be, and burdened by few scruples regarding human rights or fair elections, the Chinese have been major players here for two decades. Korean, Japanese and India traders were slower off the mark, but they twigged to the opportunities a few years ago.

Now, as tentative democratic reforms undertaken by the quasi-civilian government that replaced the generals two years ago have begun to take hold – and following the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from years of house arrest – the West, Canada included, has been unravelling economic sanctions in a belated scramble for a share of the spoils.

But it is more than just the prospect of profiting that makes Burma special to westerners. Its enduring romantic appeal can partly be explained by Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, Mandalay, which begins:

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ eastward to the sea,

There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me;

For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:

Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!

Another British writer, George Orwell, celebrated Burma, too, but in a much different way. A former colonial policeman and a prickly anti-imperialist, Orwell’s first novel, Burmese Days, featured a dazzling description of a tiger hunt and chronicled the oppressive dyspepsia of life on the steamy margins of Britain’s failing empire.

Burma tugs at western hearts because it is a vestigial remnant of an Orient that no longer exists elsewhere except in books and photographs. The exotic Singapores, Shanghais and Saigons of yore have been erased over the past few decades by skyscrapers and other glitzy trophies heralding Asia’s growing economic might.

Burma, with its trove of dilapidated imperial buildings, bucolic landscapes of palm groves, forests of teak, monasteries and gold-domed pagodas and the inspiring piety of its Buddhist monks and nuns, remains mostly as it was a century ago.

Phil Walter/Getty ImagesGauthier Klauss and Matthieu Peche of France compete during the Men's Canoe Double (C2) Slalom heats on Day 3 of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

While western dress has become de rigueur across much of Asia, another throwback here is that most Burmese still choose to wrap their limbs in a cloth known as a longyi. In keeping with tradition, large numbers of women and children and more than a few men also continue to daub their faces with thanakha, a distinctive pale yellow paste made from bark.

Not that everything is paradisical. The generals continue to have a disproportionate say in politics. While some reforms have been initiated, there are still political prisoners, albeit fewer than a few months ago. Because of enduring trade sanctions, international credit cards are still not accepted, so tourists and businessmen alike must carry with them large wads of pristine U.S. bank notes.

There are only a few reasonable hotels, dreadful telephone connections and not nearly enough English speakers to support the business and tourist explosion that is looming.

Still, until now, the pace of life in Burma remains unhurried. Visitors are warmly welcomed. Highly unusual for Asia, drivers and pedestrians are still mostly deferential.

As fond as westerners may be of the otherworldly Burma that exists today, few Burmese in this rundown living museum find life to be charming or pleasant. They hunger for change and want it now.

WASHINGTON — Burma democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi meets Wednesday with President Barack Obama and will be presented with Congress’ highest award, signs of Washington’s deep admiration for one of the world’s most famous political dissidents.

A senior administration official said Obama will meet privately with Suu Kyi at the White House. The Nobel laureate is on a 17-day trip to the U.S. She spent 15 years under house arrest for opposing military rule in the country also known as Myanmar.

The official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the meeting before it was announced publicly, said there would be no news coverage because Suu Kyi is not a head of state. That also likely reflects concerns that her Washington visit could overshadow the country’s reformist president, Thein Sein, who attends the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

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Thein Sein is a member of Burma’s former ruling junta who has led the political opening over the past two years that was heralded by Suu Kyi’s release in late 2010. Suu Kyi has since been elected to parliament and co-operates with Thein Sein.

As a result, the U.S. normalized diplomatic relations with Burma and in July allowed U.S. companies to start investing there again. The administration is now considering easing the main plank of its remaining sanctions, a ban on imports.

Suu Kyi voiced support for that step after she met Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, saying Burma should not depend on the U.S. to keep up its momentum for democracy. Some of her supporters, however, oppose it, saying reforms have not taken root and Washington will lose leverage with Burma, which still faces serious human rights issues. Clinton also expressed concern Tuesday that Burma retains some military contacts with North Korea.

The ceremonial highlight of Suu Kyi’s visit will be Wednesday’s presentation in the Capitol Rotunda of the Congressional Gold Medal that she was awarded in absentia in 2008 when she was still under house arrest. She will also meet with Senate and House leaders. Clinton will attend the medal ceremony.

“This is a truly special day here at the Capitol,” Mitch McConnell, minority Republican leader, said on the Senate floor ahead of the ceremony. “It’s been a long time coming. We are honoured to have this hero with us and delighted to award her our nation’s highest civilian honour.”

Suu Kyi’s cause is one that Democrats and Republicans in an increasingly divided Washington have united in championing over the years, and several lawmakers who have advocated sanctions have visited Burma over the past year to consult with her on the shift in U.S. policy.

Despite bitter political divisions, both parties in Congress have broadly supported the administration’s steps to reward Burma for its shift from military rule. Congress in August renewed the import ban, but Obama could seek to waive its provisions.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/09/19/burmas-suu-kyi-set-for-historic-meeting-with-barack-obama-will-receive-highest-congressional-honour/feed/8stdAung San Suu Kyi (C), Chair of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Member of Parliament from Kawhmu Constituency, meets with Senators (L-R) John Kerry (D-MA), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Harry Reid (D-NV), Jim Webb (D-VA), and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) at the U.S. Capitol in Washington September 19, 2012.Burma pardons more than 500 prisoners including political detaineeshttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/09/17/burma-pardons-more-than-500-prisoners-including-political-detainees/
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YANGON — Burma pardoned more than 500 prisoners on Monday in an amnesty that included political detainees, according to the opposition party, a step that could strengthen the former military state’s growing bonds with Washington.

A government bulletin announcing the news on state television did not make clear if any of those affected were political inmates. But Naing Naing, an official of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party, said he was hopeful the amnesty included the country’s 424 remaining political prisoners.

“We’re optimistic that these are the remaining political prisoners,” said Naing Naing, himself a former political prisoner.

The NLD, he added, received word of the freed political prisoners from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a Thai-based group that tracks prisoners in Burma, also known as Myanmar.

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Contacted by Reuters, Bo Kyi, secretary-general of the AAPP, said political prisoners were among those who had been released but the organization needed more time to confirm the number.

The timing of the amnesty is significant, coming days ahead of a visit to the United States by Burma’s reformist President, Thein Sein, and a separate U.S. trip that began on Monday by opposition leader Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Her election to parliament in April helped to transform Burma’s pariah image and convince the West to begin rolling back sanctions after a year of dramatic reforms, including the release of about 700 political prisoners in amnesties between May 2011 and July this year.

The United States has repeatedly called for all remaining dissidents to be freed as a pre-condition for further economic rewards, including a relaxation of a ban on imports of Burma-made products imposed years ago in response to human rights abuses.

Naing Naing of the NLD said the 424 freed political prisoners excluded inmates who were former military intelligence officials purged under the military junta that ruled for 49 years as one of Asia’s most oppressive regimes before ceding power to a semi-civilian government in March last year.

Suu Kyi left Sunday for the United States where she will receive a Congressional medal.

Thein Sein, a former general, was due to head to the United States on September 24, where he will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York for the first time as president.

Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi became only the second woman after Queen Elizabeth to address both houses of Britain’s parliament on Thursday, a rare honour she used to ask for help in a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring democracy to her country.

Cutting a tiny figure in parliament’s cavernous and historic Westminster Hall, the 67-year-old Nobel laureate received a standing ovation on arrival, introduced as “the conscience of a country and a heroine for humanity.”

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“We have an opportunity to re-establish true democracy in Burma. It is an opportunity for which we have waited decades,” she said in her address, in a forum previously reserved for such heads of state as Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama.

“If we do not get things right this time round, it may be several decades more before a similar opportunity arises again,” she warned.

Dominic Lipinski / AFP / Getty ImagesBurmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi in Westminster Hall on Thursday. She is only the second woman after Queen Elizabeth to address both houses of Britain's parliament.

“I would ask Britain, as one of the oldest parliamentary democracies, to consider what it can do to help build the sound institutions needed to build a nascent parliamentary democracy,” she said, wearing trademark flowers in her hair and a white shawl.

Suu Kyi is in Britain as part of a 17-day tour of Europe that has at times been emotional and physically demanding. On Wednesday she returned to Oxford, where she once lived with her late husband and two sons before returning to Burma in 1988.

The visit, to care for her mother, was supposed to be brief, but Suu Kyi, daughter of assassinated Burmese independence hero Aung San, was swept into her country’s political turmoil as the military crushed protests and seized power.

She spent 15 of the next 24 years under house arrest, making the Oxford graduate an icon of non-violent political resistance.

Suu Kyi refused offers allowing her to leave the country for fear she would not be allowed to return, costing her the chance to see her children grow up and also the opportunity to be with her husband, Michael Aris, before he died of cancer in 1999.

After nearly half a century of direct military rule, in 2010 the ruling junta gave way to a quasi-civilian government stuffed with former generals, and since then current President Thein Sein has startled the world with his appetite for reforms.

Sukree Sukplang / ReutersAung San Suu Kyi greets migrant workers from Burma, as she visits them in Samut Sakhon province on May 30, 2012. It was the first time she had ventured outside Burma in 24 years.

Thein Sein has eased media censorship, released political prisoners and held talks with ethnic rebels — moves unthinkable just a few years earlier.

Suu Kyi was released from house arrest and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party dominated April byelections, threatening the state’s military hegemony ahead of parliamentary polls in 2015.

British Prime Minister David Cameron earlier on Thursday said Thein Sein will travel to London in the coming months for talks on reform, a move Suu Kyi said she supported despite the president’s background in Burma’s military junta.

“I think it’s right to invite him. Because we don’t want to be shackled by the past. We want to use the past to build a happier future,” she said.

We don’t want to be shackled by the past. We want to use the past to build a happier future

The reforms have earned Burma the suspension of some European sanctions, but Suu Kyi has urged skepticism, and on Thursday she called on the West to act as “watchdogs” to guard against government reversals on the path to democracy.

“People thought perhaps because we were in prison or under house arrest, because our party so repressed, were going through the most difficult period,” Suu Kyi said during a news conference with Cameron at Downing Street.

“No, we are about to go forward onto the most difficult road we’ve ever walked before, because now will decide what will happen in 2015 and now will decide whether we are going to make the make the breakthrough to democracy,” she said.

Reuters

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WASHINGTON — Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Tuesday she would not oppose a freeze on U.S. sanctions but urged caution, warning that her country could slide back after dramatic reforms.

Suu Kyi, who was sworn in May 2 as a member of parliament after spending most of the past two decades under house arrest, spoke via Skype to a rare event in Washington involving former president George W. Bush.

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Suu Kyi gave a cautious nod to a call Monday by John McCain, a leading senator of Bush’s Republican Party, for a limited-time freeze on most sanctions on Burma — similar to a recent move by the European Union.

“That is a way of sending a strong message that we will try to help the process of democratization but if this is not maintained, then we will have to think of other ways of making sure that the aspiration of the people of Burma for democracy is respected,” Suu Kyi said.

“I am not against the suspension of sanctions as long as the people of the United States feel that this is the right thing to do at the moment. I do advocate caution, though,” she added.

“I sometimes feel that people are too optimistic about the scene in Burma. You have to remember that the democratization process is not irreversible.”

Repeating one of her frequent themes, Suu Kyi said that reforms would only be considered irreversible once the military — long Myanmar’s most powerful institution with a history of abuses — firmly committed to changing its ways.

Suu Kyi, the winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, enjoys wide respect across the political spectrum in Washington and her views are considered critical to any US decision to lift decades worth of sanctions on Myanmar.

Since taking office a year ago, President Thein Sein has surprised even many cynics by opening talks with Suu Kyi and ethnic rebels, allowing by-elections swept by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy and freeing political prisoners.

But Suu Kyi said that Myanmar has not freed 271 political prisoners on a list handed by her party to the home ministry.

“There should be no political prisoners in Burma if we are really heading for democratization,” she said.

McCain, in his proposal to suspend sanctions, said that Burma needed to do more to end long-running ethnic wars but that President Thein Sein was “sincere about reform.”

President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration has championed dialogue with Burma since taking over from Bush but has been cautious about a full lifting of sanctions, saying it needs to preserve leverage to encourage change.

Bush was in Washington to launch the Freedom Collection, which brings together mementos and lessons from dissidents and reformers. The collection has gone online and will eventually have a physical home at the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The former president described the Arab Spring — the protest wave that has toppled authoritarian leaders since early 2011 — as part of the “extraordinary times in the history of freedom.”

“Great change has come to a region where many thought it impossible. The idea that Arab people are somehow content with oppression has been discredited forever,” Bush said.

Bush made no direct reference to the Iraq war, one of his most controversial legacies, but said the “tactics of promoting freedom will vary case by case.”

“America does not get to choose if a freedom revolution should begin or end in the Middle East, or elsewhere. It only gets to choose what side it is on,” Bush said.

“But America’s message should ring clear and strong: We stand for freedom and for the institutions and habits that make freedom work for everyone.”

The Freedom Collection event, held blocks away from the White House, marked a rare return to the US capital for Bush, who quipped: “I actually found my freedom by leaving Washington.”

WASHINGTON — The United States is moving to ease bans on U.S. companies investing in and providing financial services to Burma, and will first target those sectors that could support democratic reforms in the country, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

The official said that final reviews were under way following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge earlier this month to begin unwinding U.S. business sanctions, with decisions expected in coming weeks.

“It will be a matter of weeks to months to actually implement all that, but we are not looking long term,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters in an interview.

The United States has repeatedly promised to review sanctions in response to dramatic political reforms in Burma that have seen veteran pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi elected to parliament and a raft of other repressive measures lifted. Burma was run by the military for five decades until a year ago.

But the complex web of U.S. sanctions has proved hard to unravel, leaving some companies fretting they will be left out of a potential economic boom in the country.

“It has taken a lot of our time to figure out how to navigate them and therefore how to use them to send the signals that we want to send,” the official said.

Certain sectors of the Southeast Asian country’s economy, notably industries such as mining, oil and timber, remain riddled with cronyism, making them less appealing candidates for immediate sanctions relief, the official said.

But he said greater U.S. involvement in other sectors could help Burma transform its economy and establish new standards for transparency, accountability and corporate social responsibility.

“We still are concerned about the reversibility and the sustainability of reform. But we also believe it is time that we also relieve some of the restrictions that are getting in the way of our ability to partner on reform,” he said, stressing no specific decisions had yet been made.

’LOW-HANGING FRUIT’

The United States has already eased some limits on Burma, announcing this week it would permit financial transactions to support humanitarian and development projects – a boon to non-governmental organizations that hope to expand operations there..

The United States has also moved to support normal U.N. Development Program, or UNDP, operations, and is working to set up a local office of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Government contacts are also expanding as the United States drops visa bans on senior Burma leaders. The country’s health minister was in Washington last week, and its foreign minister is due in May.

The United States is also expected soon to return a full ambassador to Burma after an absence of two decades.

But U.S. businesses are watching closely for steps to ease sanctions on investment, which have helped keep the country isolated and pushed it deeper into the economic embrace of its powerful neighbor China.

The U.S. official said that banking services, the agricultural sector and telecommunications were all areas where U.S. companies could make contributions to Burma’s economic reforms and the welfare of its people.

“These are low-hanging fruit,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, vice president for policy at the Asia Society, adding that a step-by-step strategy could help preserve U.S. leverage but also ran the risk of allowing other countries to steal the march on one of Asia’s most promising, yet undeveloped economies.

“It is really going to be hard for the United States to compete with the Chinese in the immediate future, especially if it takes a sector-by-sector approach,” DiMaggio said.

’FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD LOOK’

The U.S. official said Washington remained leery of Burma’s extractive industries, saying they were “riddled with cronyism,” deeply involved with corrupt elements of the military and focused in restive areas where ethnic minority groups say they have long been oppressed.

“That sector probably shines brightest in terms of having to give it a first, second and third look,” the official said.

He also said the United States had broader concerns over the commitment of military leaders to reform, and their ties to North Korea.

U.S. officials and economic analysts have cautioned that, despite its progress, Burma will likely remain a challenging business environment. Corruption, shaky investment protections and infrastructure problems promise to slow international investment and trade even as sanctions fall away.

But China already has extensive economic interests in Burma, Australia has eased sanctions, and the European Union is expected to suspend its economic sanctions next week, opening the country to more competition..

Washington hopes that as it opens its own door to economic ties, U.S. companies will benefit from the halo effect of strong U.S. support for the reform process and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi herself.

“I think our companies will have an equal, level playing field when they go in,” the official said. “They want to buy American. They want to engage with America.”

YANGON — Burma’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi held rare talks with President Thein Sein on Wednesday ahead of a parliament debut that her party threatened to delay unless an oath taken by lawmakers was changed.

Suu Kyi met with former junta general Thein Sein at the presidential palace in the capital Naypyitaw and discussed her new parliamentary role and “cooperating in the interests of the nation,” Suu Kyi’s aide, Khun Tha Myint, told Reuters.

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It was the second time the 66-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has met the reform-minded president, who she says is trustworthy despite being a heavyweight in the authoritarian army junta that kept her in detention for 15 year.

But hours after the meeting, her National League for Democracy (NLD) party took issue with the wording of a mandatory oath taken by new members of parliament, which requires them to swear to safeguard the constitution — which Suu Kyi has pledged to amend to reduce the military’s political power.

Suu Kyi won a place in the lower house when the NLD won 43 of 45 available seats in a historic April 1 by-election, thrashing Thein Sein’s Union Solidarity and Development Party which is by far the dominant force in the legislature.

The NLD’s 37 new lower house MPs have been invited to attend the resumption of a parliament session on April 23, but the party warned they may not.

“It is impossible for NLD elected candidates to take that oath when they join parliament,” spokesman Nyan Win said.

“So our NLD candidates will not be able to attend … but if this wording is changed before the upcoming session ends, it will pave the way for our candidates to attend parliament.”

Suu Kyi carries immense political clout and her participation could boost the credibility of a fledgling parliament that is stacked with retired generals and grants a 25-percent seat quota for appointed military personnel.

The process had been going smoothly up until the NLD’s announcement on Wednesday, with the international community giving tacit endorsement of the election.

Some Western countries, including Britain, France and the United States, have given strong hints they may start to lift some sanctions as early as this month in response to reforms undertaken in the year since the military dictatorship ceded power to a civilian-led administration.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/11/aung-san-suu-kyis-parliamentary-debut-in-burma-may-be-delayed-over-mandatory-oath/feed/3stdBurma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi (L) gestures as she walks out of a hotel on her way to a meeting with President Thein Sein at the president's official residence in the capital Naypyidaw on April 11, 2012Burmese opposition leader Suu Kyi’s parliamentary debut in two weekshttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/09/burmese-opposition-leader-suu-kyis-parliamentary-debut-in-two-weeks/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/09/burmese-opposition-leader-suu-kyis-parliamentary-debut-in-two-weeks/#commentsMon, 09 Apr 2012 15:57:25 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=159699

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON—Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been invited to make her debut in parliament in two weeks, her party said on Monday, following a historic landslide victory for her and other party members in by-elections.

Party spokesman Nyan Win said Suu Kyi and 36 other National League for Democracy (NLD) candidates who won parliament seats had been asked to go to the capital, Naypyitaw, for the resumption of the house session, which initially was not expected to include the newly elected members.

The 66-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s appearance in Burma’s parliament will mark one of the biggest leaps forward for a country that was ruled by iron-fisted generals for five decades until a year ago.

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The NLD won 43 of 45 seats contested in the April 1 ballots, dealing a crushing blow to the ruling military-backed party which won a 2010 general election widely deemed to have been rigged. The NLD boycotted that election.

“NLD candidates elected for the lower house including chairperson Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will attend the lower house session due to resume on April 23,” Nyan Win said. Daw is a Burmese honorific.

He said the NLD’s four new senators had yet to be contacted. The NLD also won two seats in regional assemblies.

The international community appears to have accepted the by-elections were free and fair and several Western countries – the United States, France and Britain among them – have given strong hints of an imminent easing of some sanctions regarding investment and provision of financial services.

Soe Zeya Tun/REUTERSA crowd of reporters rush to photograph Aung San Suu Kyi during the meeting of National League for Democracy for candidates who won in the by-election.

REJOINING SUU KYI

The resumption of the parliamentary session coincides with the April 23 expiration of European Union sanctions. Diplomats say some restrictions, like investment in certain sectors and visa bans, are likely to be dropped while others – arms bans and access to trade concessions – are expected to be maintained.

The polls were largely symbolic, seen as a rejection of the military’s powerful political role and public endorsement of the wildly popular Suu Kyi, who spent a total of 15 years in detention because of her opposition to military rule.

The win gives the NLD a stake of less than seven percent of the lower house and senate, but Suu Kyi’s presence is expected to carry huge weight and some parliamentarians are re-assessing their positions.

Three members of parliament from the National Democratic Force (NDF), an NLD splinter party that ran in the 2010 election, have applied to rejoin the NLD, as had an MP with the New National Democratic Party (NNDP), spokesman Nyan Win said.

Former NDF senator Myat Thura Soe had already been accepted by the NLD while three lower house MPs – Than Win (NDF), Khin Maung Win (NDF) and Kyi Myint (NNDP) – were awaiting approval, he said.

The polls follow a year of astonishing change in a country that was in the grip of the generals from 1962 until a quasi-civilian and apparently reform-minded government took office.

Suu Kyi’s presence in parliament is likely to be a big boon for a government that is trying hard to sell its sprawling legislature as proof it has taken genuine steps towards becoming a functioning democracy.

Over the past year hundreds of political prisoners have been freed, talks held with ethnic minority rebels, censorship has been eased, trade unions allowed and the country has shown signs of pulling back from the influence of China, which saw Myanmar as a bulwark against U.S. influence.

Suu Kyi hailed the election win as a “triumph of the people” and is expected to focus on pushing for reforms that strengthen the rule of law in one of the world’s most corrupt countries and raise living standards for Burma’s 60 million people.

The NLD won an election for a constitution-drafting assembly in 1990 but the military ignored the result.

For the next two decades the junta effectively excluded Suu Kyi and her party from politics while she boycotted military-run processes like the drafting of a constitution, which gives the military a leadership role, and the 2010 election.

The NLD claimed it was on course to win all 44 of 45 seats in Sunday’s byelections

Military-backed ruling party still holds huge majority in parliament

By Hla Hla Htay

Rangoon — Burma’s opposition claimed a historic victory on Sunday for pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in her first bid for a seat in parliament, sparking scenes of jubilation among supporters.

Thousands of people clapped and cheered outside Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) headquarters in Yangon after the party announced the Nobel Peace Prize laureate had won a parliamentary seat after by-elections.

Some people danced in the street while others wept with joy at the news, which if confirmed would mark a stunning turnaround for the former political prisoner, who was locked up by the former junta for most of the past 22 years.

“We have been waiting for this day for a long time. I’m so happy,” said NLD supporter Kalyar, who goes by one name.

Suu Kyi won an estimated 99 percent of the votes in Kawhmu constituency, according to NLD official Soe Win, based on the party’s own tally. There was no independent confirmation and official results were expected within a week.

Soe Than WIN/AFP/Getty ImagesOpposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi greets supporters as she travels across the constituency where she stood as a candidate in Kawhmu on Sunday.

The party also claimed it was on course to win all 44 seats it contested in Sunday’s by-elections, in which a total of 45 seats were at stake — not enough to threaten the army-backed ruling party’s huge majority in parliament.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Istanbul for a meeting of the “Friends of Syria” group, said Washington was committed to supporting the nascent reforms in Burma that have been cautiously welcomed by the West.

“While the results have not yet been announced, the United States congratulates the people who participated, many for their first time in the campaign and election process,” Clinton told reporters.

Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesNLD supporters celebrate their victory outside the party headquarters in Yangon.

Observers believe Burma’s new quasi-civilian government wanted Suu Kyi to win a place in parliament to burnish its reform credentials and smooth the way for an easing of Western sanctions.

A European Union official invited to observe the vote hailed “very encouraging” signs at the roughly dozen polling stations her team visited.

“However, that’s definitely not enough to assume that it is indicative of how the process was conducted in other parts of the country and certainly not enough to talk about credibility of elections,” Malgorzata Wasilewska said.

Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesBurmese workers counting votes

Many of Suu Kyi’s supporters had earlier waited for hours in searing heat to catch a glimpse of the 66-year-old in the rural Kawhmu constituency, two hours’ drive from Yangon, where her main rival was a former military doctor with the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party.

Voters, some in traditional ethnic Karen dress, queued patiently to cast their votes. In stark contrast to life under the junta, many openly expressed their support and affection for “The Lady”.

“There’s only been one person for us for 20 years,” said Tin Zaw Win.

Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesNLD supporters pack a truck with the hope of seeing Aung San Suu Kyi on her visit to her constituency.

“We believe in her and want to vote for her. Almost my whole village will vote for Aunt Suu,” he added.

Some people complained that their names were missing from the voter lists, although it was unclear how many were affected.

“I want to vote for Mother Suu but they haven’t given me my ballot paper so I’m here to demand it,” Zin Min Soe told AFP at a polling station.

The NLD also complained of ballot-paper irregularities, notably that wax had been put over the check box for the party, which could be rubbed off the ballot later to cancel the vote.

It was not immediately clear how widespread irregularities were.

“This is happening around the country,” NLD spokesman Nyan Win told AFP. “I have sent a complaint letter to the union election commission.”

Mikhail Galustov/Getty ImageA young supporter of the NLD cheers as election results come in from different regions.

In the run-up to the eagerly awaited vote, the party decried alleged intimidation of candidates and other irregularities, and Suu Kyi said the poll could not be considered “a genuinely free and fair election”.

A 2010 general election, won by the military’s political proxies, was plagued by complaints of cheating and the exclusion of Suu Kyi, who was released from seven straight years of house arrest shortly afterwards.

The NLD swept to a landslide election victory in 1990, but the generals who ruled the country formerly known as Burma for decades until last year never recognised the result.

The seats being contested Sunday were made vacant by MPs who joined the government. The next general election is due in 2015.

After almost half a century of military rule, the junta in March last year handed power to a new government led by President Thein Sein, one of a clutch of former generals who shed their uniforms to contest the 2010 poll.

Since then, the regime has surprised even its critics with a string of reforms such as releasing hundreds of political prisoners.

But remaining political detainees, fighting between government troops and ethnic rebels, and alleged human rights abuses remain major concerns for Western nations which have imposed sanctions on the regime.

A U.S. lawmaker who has drafted sanctions against Burma said it was premature to ease pressure despite Sunday’s vote.

Representative Joe Crowley said it was “important to keep things in perspective.”

“Far too many political prisoners are still locked behind bars, violence continues against ethnic minorities and the military dominates not only the composition but the structure of the government,” he said.

“Now is not the time for the international community to rush toward lifting pressure on Burma,” he added.

Unlike in 2010, the government allowed foreign observers and journalists to witness Sunday’s polls. More than six million people were eligible to vote.

AFP

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/01/burmese-election-aung-san-suu-kyi/feed/44stdNational League for Democracy supporters celebrate their victory in the parliamentary elections outside the party headquarters Sunday in Yangon.Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi greets supporters as she travels across the constituency where she stood as a candidate in Kawhmu on Sunday.NLD supporters celebrate their victory outside the party headquarters in Yangon.Burmese workers counting votesNLD supporters pack a truck with the hope of seeing Aung San Suu Kyi on her visit to her constituency.NLD supporters celebrate outside the NLD headquarters.A young supporter of the NLD cheers as election results come in from different regions.Aung San Suu Kyi visiting polling stations in her constituency.Burmese opposition claims by-election win for dissident leader Suu Kyihttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/01/aung-san-suu-kyi-burma-election/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/01/aung-san-suu-kyi-burma-election/#commentsSun, 01 Apr 2012 14:57:21 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=157390

By Aung Hla Tun and Andrew R.C. Marshall

Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a seat in parliament on Sunday, her party said, after an historic by-election that is testing the country’s nascent reform credentials and could persuade the West to end sanctions.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party claimed victories in at least 19 of the 45 available seats and announced to loud cheers that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate had won in Kawhmu, southwest of the commercial capital Yangon, raising the prospect of a sizable political role following a two-decade struggle against military dictatorship.

The charismatic and wildly popular Suu Kyi, who suffered from illness and exhaustion on the campaign trail, did not address the crowd but issued a statement asking supporters to respect the other parties.

“It is natural that the NLD members and their supporters are joyous at this point,” Suu Kyi said. “However, it is necessary to avoid manners and actions that will make the other parties and members upset. It is very important that NLD members take special care that the success of the people is a dignified one.”

Traffic around the NLD’s crumbling Yangon offices ground to a halt as about 2,000 supporters gathered, waving flags and cheering as one by one, NLD candidates claimed victories.

“We keep hearing we have had more success but we need to hear it from our candidates,” a party official told Reuters.

The Election Commission had yet to confirm any of the results and officials from the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) could not be reached for comment.

The United States and the European Union have hinted that they may lift some sanctions – imposed over the past two decades in response to human rights abuses – if the election is free and fair, unleashing a wave of investment in the impoverished but resource-rich country bordering rising powers India and China.

Suu Kyi had complained last week of “irregularities,” though none were significant enough for any immediate dispute.

Voters filed into makeshift polling stations from dawn, some gushing with excitement after casting ballots for the frail Suu Kyi, or “Aunty Suu” as she is affectionately known.

Among supporters who voted in her rustic constituency of bamboo-thatched homes in Kawhmu, there was little doubt she would win. “Almost everyone we asked voted for Aunty Suu,” said Ko Myint Aung, a 27-year-old shop owner.

To be regarded as credible, the vote needs the blessing of Suu Kyi, who was freed from house arrest in November 2010, six days after a widely criticized general election that paved the way for the end of 49 years of direct army rule and the opening of a parliament stacked with retired or serving military.

President Thein Sein, a general in the former military junta, has surprised the world with the most dramatic political reforms since the military took power in a 1962 coup in the former British colony then known as Burma.

In just one year, the government has freed hundreds of political prisoners, held peace talks with ethnic rebels, relaxed strict media censorship, allowed trade unions, and showed signs of pulling back from the powerful economic and political orbit of its giant neighbor China.

It was rewarded last November when Hillary Clinton made the first visit to the country by a U.S. secretary of state since 1955. Business executives, mostly from Asia but many from Europe, have swarmed to Yangon in recent weeks to hunt for investment opportunities in the country of 60 million people, one of the last frontier markets in Asia.

A small number of officials from Western countries and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) were invited to attend the polls but given only a few days to prepare. They called themselves “visitors” rather than observers.

“Whatever irregularities we saw … did not seem to be out of bad will or intentions. It was more lack of experience or knowledge,” said EU delegate Malgorzata Wasilewska, adding that irregularities could still occur in the counting process.

CHANGING TIMES

The 2010 election was condemned as rigged to favor the USDP, a party formed by the junta before it ceded power a year ago. The USDP is by far the biggest party in the legislature.

The NLD boycotted that vote. But just as Myanmar is changing, so too is Suu Kyi. Many see her now, at 66, as more politically astute, more realistic and ready to compromise. She has described Thein Sein as “honest” and “sincere” and accepted his appeal for the NLD to take part.

Her top priorities, she says, are introducing the rule of law, ending long-simmering ethnic insurgencies and amending the 2008 constitution that ensures the military retains a political stake and its strong influence over the country.

Many expect Suu Kyi to exert considerable influence and some wonder if conservatives would dare oppose her ideas in parliament given her popularity, especially ahead of a general election in 2015. Many MPs want to be seen aligned with her, basking in her popular support.

The election has not gone smoothly. Suu Kyi has suffered sickness and accused rivals of vandalizing NLD posters, padding electoral registers and “many, many cases of intimidation.”

Some of these infractions, however, are quite minor compared with elections elsewhere in Southeast Asia, where vote-buying and even assassinations are common.

On Friday the NLD said a betel nut had been catapulted at one of its candidates and a haystack set on fire close to where another was due to give a speech. It made fresh claims of irregularities on Sunday, alleging coercion by the USDP and damage of ballot papers.

Some critics say Suu Kyi is working too closely with a government stacked with the same former generals who persecuted dissidents, and fear she is being exploited to persuade the West to end sanctions and make the legislature appear effective. Others have almost impossibly high hopes for her to accelerate reforms once she enters parliament.

“Too many expectations are dangerous,” says Ko Ko Gyi, a former political prisoner. “She is not a magician.”

Some U.S. restrictions such as visa bans and asset freezes could be lifted quickly if the election goes smoothly, diplomats say, while the EU may end its ban on investment in timber and the mining of gemstones and metals.

But some critics say sanctions should remain in place to encourage more reforms and ensure all political prisoners are freed and bloody conflicts with ethnic militias cease.

“Giving the NLD the ability to win an extremely limited number of seats in parliament is not enough,” said Joe Crowley, who in January made the first visit to Myanmar by a U.S. congressman in 12 years. “Now is not the time for the international community to rush toward lifting pressure on Burma.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/01/aung-san-suu-kyi-burma-election/feed/10stdA supporters of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party cheers holding a portrait of Burma pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi while watching increasing votes on a screen at the roof of the NLD office in Yangon Sunday.John Baird offers Burma democracy leader Suu Kyi honourary Canadian citizenshiphttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/08/suu-kyi-burma-myanmar/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/08/suu-kyi-burma-myanmar/#commentsThu, 08 Mar 2012 14:25:05 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=149295

NAYPYITAW, Burma — Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird came bearing gifts Thursday as he travelled to Myanmar, ruled by one of Asia’s most repressive dictatorial regimes.

Baird met first with Myanmar President Thein Sein, then with prominent pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi.

To Suu Kyi, an opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate who used the visit to express concerns about the country’s upcoming April election, he presented a certificate of honorary Canadian citizenship and an informal invitation to visit Canada.

At his meeting with the president in Myanmar’s capital Naypyitaw, Baird raised the prospect of revisiting sanctions against the regime.

“Clearly we’ll be watching in the coming weeks with an eye to re-evaluating the measures that we’ve taken against the government here,” Baird told reporters.

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Canada imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions against Myanmar — also known as Burma — in 1988, in response to widespread human-rights abuses and military crackdowns against protesters. These sanctions ban military exports to the country, hinder trade and deny visas to senior members of the regime.

Baird held about an hour of talks with Sein at the opulent presidential palace, in a massive high-ceilinged ballroom with gold trim and a chandelier that appeared to be made out of diamonds.

Baird said Myanmar’s upcoming April election “needs to be transparent and it has to be respected afterwards.”

According to Baird, Myanmar’s government expressed “enthusiasm and support for a free, fair and transparent process.”

The president thanked Baird for visiting and through an interpreter said: “We have established our diplomatic relations since 1958 so it is almost 54 years.”

Baird’s visit to Myanmar comes amid signs the presiding military junta will allow more democratic freedoms in the country.

“I know there’s been a fight internally to get these reforms made so we want to give our support to the people who’ve been making the reforms and encourage them to continue in that direction,” Baird said.

“Obviously it’s a very good start. We want to acknowledge the progress they’ve made but we want to see it become part of the system.”

Baird praised the progress that’s been made so far in the country.

“We’re making clear that we’ve noted impressive progress to date and reinforcing that the April elections are an important milestone,” Baird said.

The trip is being described as part of a larger attempt to increase Canada’s profile in Asia.

Baird then flew to Yangon to meet Suu Kyi. The two spoke for about an hour at her house in discussions that included Myanmar’s upcoming election.

“We are very anxious that the election be free and fair,” Suu Kyi said, which means not just the April 1 voting day but in the campaign itself.

“We have just discovered there are many, many irregularities on the voters lists and we have applied to the election commission to do something about this,” Suu Kyi said as she stood beside Baird on her back porch.

“A lot of dead people seem to be prepared to vote on the first of April. We can’t have that, can we? And other things like that.”

Suu Kyi said her country is not yet free.

“We do not yet have complete freedom of information; we do not have complete freedom of communication; but this is what we have to work toward.”

Baird said he was “very concerned” to learn about the voting irregularities and said Canada will be watching to see what happens when the opposition brings those concerns forward to government.

Suu Kyi promised that her party would “make sure that whatever has gone wrong is put right at some time or the other.”

“We don’t want to condemn irregularities outright if they can be remedied in some way.”

Baird presented her with a silver Maple Leaf charm bracelet as a gift.

“We’d love to have you visit Canada at some point in the future,” Baird told her. “If you’re smart you’d be staying to campaign.”

Asked if the world community is giving the government too much credit for the reforms, Suu Kyi said: “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is all right.”

“I think you should also be very balanced in your judgments,” she said.

Baird said Canada is helping to support the Burmese people by contributing to international organizations such as the United Nations.

“We would love to be able to play a bigger role in development and trade and commerce,” he said.

Meanwhile, Suu Kyi said she welcomed development aid “that is used for our people,” meaning aid that is transparent and accountable.

“The government of this country must do its best to help its people first,” she said. “It’s no use saying, why aren’t other countries helping, until we can prove our government is doing its best to help our people first.”

Earlier Thursday, Baird also presented gifts to the Speaker of one of the houses of Parliament in Myanmar, Thura U-Shwe Mann.

In January, the Speaker’s office had asked the Canadian Embassy for a donation of books in order to establish a parliamentary library here.

Baird brought 13 volumes with him, including House of Commons procedure and practice, Beauchesne’s Rules and forms of the House of Commons of Canada, Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, and How Canadians Govern Themselves.

He also donated a USB memory stick containing 11 digital files from government websites on topics ranging from the rules of the Senate, a guide to estimates, a compendium of House of Commons procedures, a guide to making federal acts, various files on the justice system and the electoral system and a copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has departed for Burma, where he will meet with opposition leader and pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, along with leaders of the southeast Asian nation’s government.

During this first official visit to Burma by a Canadian foreign minister, Baird will meet with President Thein Sein and other senior government leaders.

“Wheels up. En route to Burma. A first for Canada,” Baird said on Twitter.

Baird departed Ottawa Tuesday morning, and will begin his official program March 8.

Baird’s rare visit to Burma, which is ruled by one of Asia’s most repressive and dictatorial regimes, comes amid signs the presiding military junta will allow more democratic freedoms in the country.

AFP Photo/Jewel SamadJohn Baird will also meet with President Thein Sein and other senior officials in Naypyidaw.

In response to widespread human-rights abuses and military crackdowns against protesters, Canada imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions against Burma in 1988. These sanctions ban military exports to the country, hinder trade, and deny visas to senior members of the regime.

“We are visiting at a time when we’re cautiously optimistic about recent changes,” a source told Postmedia News. “While we’re not at a point of lifting sanctions, we want to make sure advances made are not reversible.”

Burma’s ruling junta surprised many when it liberated opposition politician and pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi — who was kept under house arrest for some 15 years — in November. In January, she announced she would run for a seat in a parliamentary byelection, and has been campaigning since.

Speaking via video conference to an audience at Ottawa’s Carleton University last week, Suu Kyi thanked Canada for its help in pushing Burma closer to democracy, saying sanctions have been effective.

“Canada has helped us greatly with regard to our movement toward democracy,” said Suu Kyi, who was named an honorary Canadian citizen in 2007.

While there are positive signs the junta is becoming more moderate, she said, it’s too early to call.

“Don’t be too optimistic. Don’t be too pessimistic. Try to see things as they are and try to keep contact with the ordinary people of Burma,” she said. “The way in which you can continue to help us is to keep up your awareness of what is happening in Burma.”

Canadian Friends of Burma executive director Tin Maung Htoo said the Conservative government has been taking a “wait-and-see” approach to Burma, likely to ensure the reforms that have been launched by the ruling junta are legitimate.

He pointed to the fact hundreds of political prisoners remain detained.

Elliot Tepper, a professor of political science at Carleton University, said Canada has stood out for its persistent pressure on Burma.

This current government has been really strong on the issue of Burma, kind of a world leader in this regard

“The junta has been under severe sanctions by most countries of the world, but in particular by Canada,” he said. “This current government has been really strong on the issue of Burma, kind of a world leader in this regard.”

Tepper said the current regime is struggling to gain some democratic legitimacy, but that it’s too early to know whether democratic reforms have truly taken root.

“The question on everyone’s mind is how real it is, whether this is window dressing or will these reforms be institutionalized and lead to significant change,” he said.

Diplomatic relations with Burma have improved, evidenced by Burma’s sending of a full-fledged ambassador to Canada last year. In recent years, Burma’s top diplomat was a charge d’affaires, indicating cool bilateral relations.

Foreign ministers from a variety of western nations, including British Foreign Secretary William Hague and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have visited, meeting specifically with Suu Kyi.

On March 2, 1962, the military coup of General Ne Win formalized, under the Burma Socialist Programme Party, the military-led dictatorship which has governed Burma in one form or another to this day. Ne Win was a comrade of the Burma National Army founder, Aung San, and in combination their efforts within the Anti-Facist Organization ably exploited wartime colonial rivalries to drive out the Japanese and the British, both of whom had imperialist ambitions in South and Southeast Asia. Before the coup, Aung San was murdered by a rival, and after the triumphant General announced self-servingly that parliamentary democracy was incompatible with Burma.

Another anniversary, of a more encouraging nature, was observed this week in Ottawa. On February 29th the Canadian Friends of Burma celebrated its twentieth year, hosting a live videocast discussion with the daughter of the Burma National Army leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. As you know, Ms. Suu Kyi is the National League for Democracy leader and has spent most of the past twenty years — since the NLD’s election victory in 1990 — under house arrest. Wednesday, she received an honourary law doctorate from Carleton University and delivered a short televised address.

In moral courage and determination, Suu Kyi is surpassed by few. Educated, well-travelled, and cosmopolitan, her acceptance speech ended by stating, “May I thank all of you for looking upon me as a civilized being — which is what I think it means when you confer on me an honourary degree in law.” Having for decades patiently prevailed against a regime neck deep in murder, rape and forced labour, “civilized” is both the most simple and profound compliment one could render. And it fits her perfectly. So unique in her combination of qualities — soft-spoken and resolute, delicate-looking and unbreakable — the repressive 1994 Burmese constitution which excluded certain categories of persons as presidential candidates was tailored specifically for her. Not good enough for the corrupted Burmese system , she was embraced everywhere people care about freedom and the rule of law. In 2007, Suu Kyi was made an honourary Canadian citizen and the Government of Canada renewed the call for a genuine Burmese democracy.

As April 1 by-elections approach, there are indications that the old ways persist. The military dominated government continues to interfere with Suu Kyi’s movements, but reservedly, fearful as it is of the world’s displeasure. Indeed, the very fact that the NLD today pursues the 48 by-election seats (too few to alter the balance of power) indicates how far things have come. Burma is far from its new dawn, but sanctions are making material differences.

In a recent speech, Aung San Suu Kyi said that “the way in which you can continue to help us is to keep up your awareness of what is happening in Burma […] Don’t be too optimistic. Don’t be too pessimistic. Try to see things as they are and try to keep contact with the ordinary people.” Good and practical advice, and applicable everywhere that decent, peaceful and civilized people are called upon for moral support in the work of resisting tyranny.

PA-AN, Burma — Burma’s government signed a cease-fire with ethnic Karen rebels Thursday to try to end one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies, part of its efforts to resolve all conflicts with separatist groups.

The government and the 19-member Karen National Union (KNU) delegation agreed in principle to 11 points and signed two broad agreements to end hostilities between the military and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and start dialogue toward a political settlement to a 62-year conflict.

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The cease-fire could be a small step toward the lifting of two decades of sanctions imposed on Burma by the European Union and the United States, which have made peace with ethnic militias a pre-requisite for a review of the embargoes.

Peace talks have been held on six occasions since 1949, but no lasting agreement has been reached.

The deputy leader of the KNU delegation, Saw David Htaw, said the climate of change in Myanmar under its new reform-minded government made dialogue inevitable.

“We have never been more confident in our talks. According to the changing situation everywhere, peace talks are unavoidable now, this is something we have to pass through without fail,” he told Reuters.

“The people have experienced the horrors of war a long time. I’m sure they’ll be very glad to hear this news. I hope they’ll be able to fully enjoy the sweet taste of peace this time.”

Through the KNLA, its military wing, the KNU has fought successive governments for greater autonomy since 1949, a year after Burma gained independence from Britain.

Saw David Htaw praised the government’s peace negotiators as “honest and sincere.”

As well as the sanctions issue, peace with the KNU is vital for Burma’s economic interests.

SECURITY THREAT

If the conflict resurfaces, it presents a security threat that could disrupt construction of the US$50-billion Dawei Special Industrial Zone, which will be Southeast Asia’s biggest industrial estate when completed and a major source of income for the impoverished country.

Past offensives by government troops have driven hundreds of thousands of Karens from villages, many into camps in neighboring Thailand, which has struggled to cope with the flood of refugees.

Burma’s army has been accused of oppressing the Karens and other ethnic minorities by committing human rights abuses ranging from rape and forced labor to torture and murder. The West has responded by maintaining tight sanctions.

According to the agreements reached in Pa-an in eastern Kayin State, all efforts would be made to resettle and rehabilitate the displaced. Arms would be permitted in certain areas, landmines cleared and liaison offices set up to facilitate dialogue.

The talks were the latest in a series of dialogues between the government and rebel groups along Burma’s borders with Thailand and China.

An agreement has also been reached with Shan State Army (South), but initial talks with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) have been derailed by persistent fighting, despite an order last month by President Thein Sein for the military to end its operations.

U.S. officials have said the peace process might prove the toughest challenge for civilian leaders who are eager to bring the nation in from the cold after five decades of army rule.

The rebels hold deep distrust toward Thein Sein’s government, which is comprised of the same people as the old military regime, but they are broadly behind Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s vision of federalism within Burma’s republic, a plan supported by her late father, Aung San.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/12/burma-signs-cease-fire-to-end-62-year-conflict-with-karen-rebels/feed/8stdThis picture taken on January 11, 2012 shows representative of the rebel Karen National Union (KNU) Saw Jawni (C) speaking to reporters during a welcoming dinner held on the eve of talks with a Burma government delegation, in Hpa-An, the main city of the country's eastern Karen state. Burma's government and the rebel KNU began peace talks on January 12, raising hopes of a ceasefire to end decades of fighting as part of the country's apparent attempts to reform.Suu Kyi hopeful of Burma democracy as UK foreign secretary makes historic visithttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/05/aung-san-suu-kyi-tells-bbc-she-will-live-to-see-full-democratic-elections-in-burma/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/05/aung-san-suu-kyi-tells-bbc-she-will-live-to-see-full-democratic-elections-in-burma/#commentsThu, 05 Jan 2012 16:43:58 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=126202

By Hla Hla Htay

NAYPYIDAW — Aung San Suu Kyi said Thursday she expected to live to see full democratic elections in Burma, ahead of historic talks with Britain’s foreign secretary, who called for more steps towards reform.

William Hague, the first British foreign minister to visit the military-dominated nation in more than half a century, urged the release of all political prisoners before holding talks with President Thein Sein.

He was due later on Thursday to meet Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace laureate who has grown cautiously positive about the country’s future since the installation of a nominally civilian regime after November 2010 elections.

“I think there will be a full democratic election in my lifetime, but then of course I don’t know how long I’m going to live,” Suu Kyi said in an interview with the BBC.

She added that her National League for Democracy (NLD) had been officially registered, passing the final hurdle to enable it to run in by-elections scheduled for April 1.

The 66-year-old opposition leader, who could enter parliament for the first time if she goes ahead with plans to contest the by-elections, was non-committal on the prospects of eventually running for president.

“I’m not even sure that this is something that I would like to do,” she said ahead of her meeting with Hague in the commercial hub of Yangon, where she lives.

Suu Kyi was freed from seven straight years of house arrest days after the 2010 polls.

Her party boycotted that vote and was stripped of its status as a legal political party by the junta as a result.

It is now gearing up to fight the by-elections, although the number of seats available is not enough to threaten the resounding majority held by the ruling military-backed party.

“Now we have got the chance to officially participate in the democratic process,” party spokesman Nyan Win told AFP.

Hague’s trip, the first by a European Union foreign minister since Burma ended decades of direct military rule, is the latest round of international diplomacy aimed at encouraging the budding reforms.

As he embarked on the mission which began in the capital Naypyidaw, Hague said he would try to encourage the Burma government to “continue on its path of reform.”

“Further steps are needed that will have a lasting impact on human rights and political freedom,” he said in a statement released by the Foreign Office in London.

“In particular, we hope to see the release of all remaining political prisoners, free and fair by-elections, humanitarian access to people in conflict areas, and credible steps towards national reconciliation.”

He told reporters that Burma’s Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin had “reaffirmed commitments that have been made to release political prisoners”, according to the BBC.

The minister “said the changes are irreversible and I welcome that way of thinking…. I stressed that the world will judge the government by its actions,” Hague said.

Since taking office last year Thein Sein — himself a former junta general — has held dialogue with Suu Kyi, suspended an unpopular Chinese-backed dam project and shown a desire to reach out to the international community.

Some political prisoners have also been released, but the government this week caused disappointment when it announced reduced jail terms for inmates, but failed to issue a much-anticipated amnesty for detained dissidents.

“We heard that the UN and other organisations were frustrated by the amnesty. I am sorry for this,” said Burma’s parliamentary speaker Shwe Mann in a statement, referring to the jail term cuts.

Shwe Mann, number three in the former junta and still considered one of the nation’s most powerful men, said Hague had been asked to give “constructive criticism” to the country’s new leaders.

Activists estimate there are still between 500 and more than 1,500 prisoners of conscience in Burma’s jails and many key dissidents are serving decades behind bars.

Burma’s flurry of high-level missions began when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the country from November 30 to December 2.

British International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell travelled to the country in November and Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba visited in December.

With U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Burma, western photographers got a rare glimpse into life of this impoverished nation.

Soe Than WIN/AFP/Getty ImagesBurma democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, right, and visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton watch each other following their meeting at Suu Kyi's residence in Yangon on December 2, 2011

Burma democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi voiced guarded hope Friday that democracy will come to Burma as the opposition leader warmly welcomed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the home that was her prison for years.

In scenes unthinkable before Burma’s recent reforms, Suu Kyi took Clinton by the arm and escorted her through the garden of her crumbling lakeside villa in the commercial hub Yangon where she was locked up until a year ago.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner said she supported Clinton’s trip a day earlier to Burma’s remote capital Naypyidaw and believed the nation had reached a “historic moment.”

“I am very confident that if we work together… there will be no turning back from the road to democracy,” Suu Kyi said next to a beaming Clinton on a back porch surrounded by potted plants.

More needed to be done by the new military-backed government, “but we hope to get there as soon as possible,” Suu Kyi added.

Clinton, who is the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Burma in more than 50 years, nodded in agreement and said she saw “openings” during her three-day trip that “give us some grounds for encouragement.”

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Below, a look at the streets around Yangon, and scenes usually hidden to Western photographers:

REUTERS/Damir SagoljA Buddhist monk (middle) and people sleep on a bridge over railway tracks in Yangon's suburbs, Burma, December 2, 2011. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived on Wednesday on the first visit to the Southeast Asian country by a U.S. secretary of state since 1955.

REUTERS/Damir SagoljPeople unload vegetables from the train at Danyingone station in Yangon's suburbs in Burma, December 2, 2011.

REUTERS/Damir SagoljPeople at market react as a train arrives at the Danyingone station in Yangon's suburbs in Burma December 2, 2011.

REUTERS/Damir SagoljA man working at the market at a train station waits for a train to arrive in Yangon's suburbs in Burma December 2, 2011.

REUTERS/Damir SagoljPeople gather near a train at the Danyingone station.

REUTERS/Damir SagoljA boy working at the market at a train station leans on straw baskets in Yangon's suburbs.

REUTERS/Damir SagoljChildren look through the window of a ruined house in Yangon.

REUTERS/Damir SagoljPeople walk near a train at the Danyingone station.

REUTERS/Damir SagoljA man washes himself with muddy water from the river at Yangon's river port.

REUTERS/Damir SagoljPeople sit at the pier at Yangon river as a boat passes by in Yangon.

Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesA Burmese man waits behind a gate for a ferry on December 2, 2011 in Yangon.

Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesBurmese passengers travel by ferry on December 2, 2011 in Yangon

Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesPassengers sit on a ferry heading home across the river on December 2, 2011 in Yangon.

Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesA Burmese man waits for a ferry on December 2, 2011 in Yangon

Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesBurmese nuns walk past a street vendor's stall displaying posters of human rights activist and politician Aung San Suu Kyi and her father Aung San on December 2, 2011 in Yangon

Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesPosters of human rights activist and politician Aung San Suu Kyi and her father Aung San are sold by a street vendor on December 2, 2011 in Yangon.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/02/photo-gallery-a-day-in-life-in-burma/feed/17galleryA woman washes dishes in a ruined house her family is inhabiting in YangonAung San Suu Kyi, right, and visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary ClintonA Buddhist monk and people sleep on a bridge over railway tracks in Yangon's suburbsPeople unload vegetables at Danyingone station in Yangon's suburbsPeople at market react as a train arrives at the Danyingone station in Yangon's suburbsA man working at the market at a train station waits for a train to arrive in Yangon's suburbsPeople gather near a train at the Danyingone station in Yangon's suburbsA boy working at the market at a train station leans on straw baskets in Yangon's suburbsChildren look through the window of a ruined house in YangonPeople walk near a train at the Danyingone station in Yangon's suburbsPeople traveling towards Yangon look through windows as the train stops at Danyingone StationA man washes himself with muddy water from the river at Yangon's river portPeople sit at the pier at Yangon river as a boat passes by in YangonReforms In Myanmar Show Positive SignsReforms In Myanmar Show Positive SignsReforms In Myanmar Show Positive SignsReforms In Myanmar Show Positive SignsReforms In Myanmar Show Positive SignsReforms In Myanmar Show Positive SignsClinton meets with democracy leader Suu Kyi, as historic tour of Burma continueshttp://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/01/clinton-meets-with-democracy-leader-suu-kyi-as-historic-tour-of-burma-continues/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/01/clinton-meets-with-democracy-leader-suu-kyi-as-historic-tour-of-burma-continues/#commentsThu, 01 Dec 2011 14:53:49 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=115037

Clinton holds “candid, productive” talks

Urges more steps, cut in “illicit” North Korea ties

Easing sanctions considered on concrete steps

Met with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi

By Andrew Quinn

YANGON — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered Burma the first rewards for reform on Thursday, saying the United States would back more aid for the reclusive country and consider returning an ambassador after an absence of some two decades.

Clinton said she had “candid, productive” conversations with President Thein Sein and other Burma ministers, and told them Washington stood ready to support further reforms, and possibly lift sanctions, as the country seeks to emerge from decades of authoritarian military rule.

But she also urged Burma to take further steps to release political prisoners and end ethnic conflicts, and said better U.S. ties would be impossible unless Burma halts its illicit dealings with North Korea, which has repeatedly set alarm bells ringing across Asia with its renegade nuclear programme.

“The president told me he hopes to build on these steps, and I assured him that these reforms have our support,” Clinton told a news conference after her talks in Burma’s remote capital, Naypyitaw.

“I also made clear that, while the measures already taken may be unprecedented and welcomed, they are just the beginning.”

Clinton’s landmark visit to the country also known as Burma marks a tentative rapprochement after more than 50 years of estrangement from the West.

She traveled later to the commercial capital of Yangon where she went barefoot in line with Buddhist tradition to tour one of Burma’s most revered shrines, the Shwedagon Pagoda.

She later held the first of two meetings with veteran pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty ImagesBurma President Thein Sein, right, shakes hands with Hillary Clinton during a meeting at the President's Office in Naypyidaw.

“BEGINNING STEPS”

Following meetings with Thein Sein and other officials in Naypyitaw, Clinton unveiled several incremental steps to improve ties and said the United States would consider returning an ambassador to the country.

The United States downgraded its representation in Burma to a charge d’affaires in response to the military’s brutal 1988 crackdown on pro-democracy protests and voiding of 1990 elections swept by Suu Kyi’s party.

“This could become an important channel to air concerns, monitor and support progress, and build trust,” Clinton said. “These are beginning steps, and we are prepared to go further if reforms maintain momentum.”

The United States would consider easing sanctions if it saw concrete reforms, she said.

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“I told the leadership we will certainly consider the easing and elimination of sanctions as we go forward in this process together … It has to be not theoretical or rhetorical, it has to be very real, on the ground, that can be evaluated.”

Clinton also said the United States would support new World Bank and International Monetary Fund assessment missions to help Burma jumpstart its feeble economy and new U.N. counter-narcotics and health cooperation programs.

Seeking to pull Burma more closely into a region increasingly united by its wariness over regional heavyweight China, Clinton invited Burma to become an observer to the Lower Mekong Initiative, a U.S.-backed grouping aimed at discussing the future of Southeast Asia’s major waterway.

But she dismissed any suggestion that engagement with Burma was driven by competition with China.

“We are not about opposing any other country. We’re about supporting this country,” she said, adding that the United States regularly consulted China on its engagement in Asia, including Burma.

Clinton also said the United States and Burma would discuss a joint effort to recover the remains of Americans killed during the building of the “Burma Road” during World War Two — echoing steps taken with Vietnam as Washington and Hanoi sought to put their differences behind them.

Rights groups and some lawmakers in the U.S. Congress have been concerned that Washington may be moving too swiftly to endorse the new leadership, and Clinton made clear that the United States needed to see more progress.

“It is encouraging that political prisoners have been released, but over 1,000 are still not free,” Clinton said.

“Let me say publicly what I said privately earlier today: no person in any country should be detained for exercising universal freedoms of expression, assembly and conscience.”

A U.S. official who sat in on the talks cited Thein Sein as saying the government considered the release of such prisoners “part of the effort of having an inclusive political process” and it was looking at the possibility of more releases.

Clinton also said it would “be difficult to begin a new chapter” until Burma began forging peace with ethnic minority rebels and started allowing humanitarian groups, human rights monitors and journalists into conflict areas.

Underscoring a key U.S. diplomatic objective, Clinton pressed Burma to halt what U.S. officials say are illicit contacts with North Korea, including trade in missile technology, and to honour U.N. sanctions imposed on Pyongyang because of its renegade nuclear programme.

“Better relations with the United States will only be possible if the entire government respects the international consensus against the spread of nuclear weapons,” she said. “We look to Naypyitaw to honour U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874 and sever illicit ties with North Korea.”

Clinton said she received “strong assurances” regarding Burma’s commitments to U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea and its obligations on non-proliferation. U.S. officials have played down fear Burma’s ties with North Korea had broadened to include a nuclear programme.

Suu Kyi said on Wednesday she fully backed Washington’s effort to gauge Burma’s reforms since the military nominally gave up power to civilian leaders following elections last year.

“I think we have to be prepared to take risk. Nothing is guaranteed,” Suu Kyi told reporters in Washington in a public video call from her home in Yangon, where she was held in detention for 15 of the last 21 years before being released in November last year.

But Suu Kyi — a Nobel peace laureate and towering figure for Burma’s embattled democracy movement — said the United States must remain watchful that the army-backed government did not halt or roll back reforms, and “speak out loud and clear” if people engaging in politics were arrested.

Suu Kyi confirmed she would run in upcoming by-elections, ending a boycott of Burma’s political system.

Clinton’s trip follows a decision by President Barack Obama last month to open the door to expanded ties, saying he saw “flickers of progress”. Clinton said it was up to Burma’s leaders to decide what came next.

“We know from history that flickers can die out. They can be stamped out,” she said.